Before the showreel of the year's highlights, the three grandees present – Lords Hall and Patten, and Tim Davie, the head of Worldwide who was interim director general between George Entwistle and Hall – slipped into their seats.
These were the Amtrak trains available to the three grandees of Wall Street; Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs; John Mack, Chairman of Morgan Stanley; and Richard Parsons, Chairman of Citigroup, leaders of perhaps the most important Wall Street firms.
This time it's two grandees of the literary world.
There may be something to this: Mr Tillis was endorsed by Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush, two grandees of the party's moderate wing.
The same cannot be said of the literature prize, which frequently goes to authors who write in languages that few if any of the judges — eighteen grandees of the Swedish Academy — can read.
As late as the 1960s, two grandees in the Lombard Street office, a Barclay and a Bevan, decreed that fish be eaten with two forks, in the manner of East Anglian Quakers.
At first, you can't see what the fuss could have been as you watch these two grandees languidly exchanging playground taunts, both oozing suave patrician disdain and each as loftily self-satisfied as the other.
This week he appointed two former prime ministers, Alain Juppé, a Gaullist, and Michel Rocard, a Socialist, to head a commission for four months to think about what to do with the money being raised.Mr Sarkozy wants the two grandees to reflect on "priorities that justify an exceptional investment effort to prepare France's future".
A decade ago, Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, two grandees of American journalism, warned of a crisis: The Clinton-Lewinsky scandal had revealed a news media publishing at "warp speed," discarding probity for prurience and embracing a non-stop news cycle of aggression, allegation and assertion where once facts were checked and sources confirmed before ministering scandal to the public.
He described the "soundings" of five Tory grandees, four of whom, like Home and MacMillan were from Eton, as a stitch up by an Etonian 'magic circle.' The article received wide publicity convincing Anthony Howard, who later declared himself "deeply affronted...and never more affronted than when Alec Douglas-Home became leader of the Conservative Party".
One grandee was blunter: "If Osborne's judgement is right, we're OK and Labour is in trouble.
